!Mira que luna! Look at that moon! Resources for learning English

Fernando Olivera: El rapto.- TEXT FROM THE NOVEL The goldfinch by Donna Tartt (...) One night we were in San Antonio, and I was having a bit of a melt-down, wanting my own room, you know, my dog, my own bed, and Daddy lifted me up on the fairgrounds and told me to look at the moon. When "you feel homesick", he said, just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go". So after he died, and I had to go to Aunt Bess -I mean, even now, in the city, when I see a full moon, it's like he's telling me not to look back or feel sad about things, that home is wherever I am. She kissed me on the nose. Or where you are, puppy. The center of my earth is you". The goldfinch Donna Tartt 4441 English edition﻿

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

The Brexit crash will make all of you poorer – be warned

The Brexit crash will
make all of you poorer – be warned

My 60 years of experience tells me the pound will
plummet, along with your living standards. The only winners will be speculators

David Cameron,
along with the Treasury, the Bank of England, the International Monetary Fund
and others have been attacked by the leave campaign for exaggerating the economic risks of Brexit. This criticism has
been widely accepted by the British media and many financial analysts. As a
result, British voters are now grossly underestimating the true costs of
leaving.
Too many believe that a vote to leave the EU will have no effect on their
personal financial position. This is wishful thinking. It would have at least
one very clear and immediate effect that will touch every household: the value
of the pound would decline precipitously. It would also have an immediate and
dramatic impact on financial markets, investment, prices and jobs.

Related: 'Brexit would trigger sterling fall worse than
Black Wednesday'
As opinion polls on the referendum result
fluctuate, I want to offer a clear set of facts, based on my six decades of
experience in financial markets, to help voters understand the very real
consequences of a vote to leave the EU.
The Bank of England, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the IMF have assessed the long-term economic
consequences of Brexit. They suggest an income loss of £3,000 to £5,000 annually
per household – once the British economy settles down to its new steady-state
five years or so after Brexit. But there are some more immediate financial
consequences that have hardly been mentioned in the referendum debate.
To start off, sterling is almost certain to fall steeply and quickly if there
is a vote to leave– even more so after yesterday’s rebound as markets reacted to
the shift in opinion polls towards remain. I would expect this devaluation to be
bigger and more disruptive than the 15% devaluation that occurred in September 1992, when I was fortunate enough to
make a substantial profit for my hedge fund investors, at the expense of the
Bank of England and the British government.

Households would loss between £3,000 and £5,000 a
year on average

It is reasonable to assume, given the expectations implied by the market
pricing at present, that after a Brexit vote the pound would fall by at least
15% and possibly more than 20%, from its present level of $1.46 to below $1.15
(which would be between 25% and 30% below its pre-referendum trading range of
$1.50 to $1.60). If sterling fell to this level, then ironically one pound would
be worth about one euro – a method of “joining the euro” that nobody in Britain
would want.

Brexiters seem to recognise that a sharp devaluation would be almost
inevitable after Brexit, but argue that this would be healthy, despite the big
losses of purchasing power for British households. In 1992 the devaluation
actually proved very helpful to the British economy, and subsequently I was even
praised for my role in helping to bring it about.
But I don’t think the 1992 experience would be repeated. That devaluation was
healthy because the government was relieved of its obligation to “defend” an
overvalued pound with damagingly high interest rates after the breakdown of the
exchange rate mechanism. This time, a large
devaluation would be much less benign than in 1992, for at least three
reasons.

Related: Sterling guesswork as financial sector calculates
Brexit effect
First, the Bank of England would not cut interest rates after a Brexit
devaluation (as it did in 1992 and also after the large devaluation of 2008)
because interest rates are already at the lowest level compatible with the
stability of British banks. That, incidentally, is another reason to worry about
Brexit. For if a fall in house prices and loss of jobs causes a recession after
Brexit, as is likely, there will be very little that monetary policy can do to
stimulate the economy and counteract the consequent loss of demand.
Second, the UK now has a very large current account deficit – much larger,
relatively, than in 1992 or 2008. In fact Britain is more dependent than at any
time in history on inflows of foreign capital. As the governor of the Bank of
England Mark Carney said, Britain “depends on the kindness of strangers”. The
devaluations of 1992 and 2008 encouraged greater capital inflows, especially
into residential and commercial property, but also into manufacturing
investments. But after Brexit, the capital flows would almost certainly move the
other way, especially during the two-year period of uncertainty while Britain
negotiates its terms of divorce with a region that has always been – and
presumably will remain – its biggest trading and investment partner.

Related: EU referendum splits Britain down the middle as
contest resumes
Third, a post-Brexit devaluation is unlikely to produce the improvement in
manufacturing exports seen after 1992, because trading conditions would be too
uncertain for British businesses to undertake new investments, hire more workers
or otherwise add to export capacity.
For all these reasons I believe the devaluation this time would be more like
the one in 1967, when Harold Wilson famously declared that “the pound in your pocket has not been
devalued”, but the British people disagreed with him, quickly noticing that
the cost of imports and foreign holidays were rising sharply and that their true
living standards were going down. Meanwhile financial speculators, back then
called the Gnomes of Zurich, were making large profits at Britain’s expense.
Today, there are speculative forces in the markets much bigger and more
powerful. And they will be eager to exploit any miscalculations by the British
government or British voters. A vote for Brexit would make some people very rich
– but most voters considerably poorer.
I want people to know what the consequences of leaving the EU would be before
they cast their votes, rather than after. A vote to leave could see the week end
with a Black Friday, and serious consequences for ordinary people.The Guardian

When I was a child my mother and aunt used to play with me looking for the facial features of the moon and animated shapes among the stars, at the moonlight. My family used to teach us how to learn with pleasure about everything. That was their passion.

And we have been enjoying it.....since then.

Madrid Weather forecast

Tiempo en Madrid

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C2 Proficiency English

Disclaimer:This blog is private, -for sharingESLresources I use every day as a long-life learner-, non-revenue generating, non-promotional, non-advertorial.If copyright is infringed and inaccuracies found, do advise. Deletion will be immediate. Thanks a lot. The author of Look at that moon!